High School Sci-Fi Literature Lesson Plans?

JBoelke asks : "I currently teach science fiction at the high-school level, this is my first semester teaching the course and I have been shocked by the lack of resources available. The reference book I am using for story selection is Groking the Future, which was made in the 1970's. It has been rather difficult to get the selections of stories recommended. I did not take a science fiction literature course in college and I was wondering if anyone from the of Slashdot community had, and could recommend provide me with contact address of the professor and University, so I could ask for their curriculum? I know these books may be more complicated for high-school students but I can modify the curriculum." Similar to this thread from 2000, this question focuses more on the curriculum aspect, rather than book recommendations. While I'm sure recommendations not mentioned in the previous thread would be appreciated, actual lesson structure ideas would be better.

Comments

Re:University of Kansas & William Gibson

[justanyone]

I've found a list of 'Required Reading' for KU's english department. The list is here if you're interested.

Other Resource from KU's English Dept. are Here and include lots of info for the english teacher of science fiction, even at the High School level.

Literary analysis of Sci Fi is similar to many other kinds of analysis, with the added issue of bringing people into a complex and scientific environment (and problems / solutions involved therewith), believablity, the role of coincidence (as Dostoyevsky said, the quality == less coincidences), etc.

Probably no need to dumb it down

[RalphBNumbers]

I know these books may be more complicated for high-school students but I can modify the curriculum.

I'm assuming that this is some sort of elective class, considering how most normal lit classes avoid scifi like the plague. If so, I would actually recommend keeping the college level material as much as possible. The re are a few reasons for this...

First off, I would hope making the class a bit challenging will be an effective counter to those in the administration and other teachers in your department who are likely to view a new course in scifi literature as trivial fluff, taking valuable resources away from their pet projects.

Then there are the students to Consider. Since I'm assuming this is an elective course, you won't have to cater to the lowest common denominator quite as much as in a requited core course. Now, it may be a stereotype that nerds like scifi, but it's not entirely unfounded in my experience. If you can get them interested enough, the kids from that demographic should have no problem with college level material.

And of course, if you don't make the course challenging, you're likely to start attracting people just looking for an easy course they can blow off.

If you must make changes, I would advise making them via some leniency on the grading end, rather than using simpler content or asking dumbed down questions.